Agricultural sustainability in the semi-arid Near East
نویسنده
چکیده
Agriculture began in the eastern Mediterranean Levantine Corridor about 11000 years ago toward the end of the Younger Dryas when aridity had diminished wild food resources. During the subsequent Climatic Optimum, agricultural villages spread rapidly but subsequent climatic changes on centennial to millennial scales resulted in striking oscillations in settlement, especially in marginal areas. Natural climate change thus alternately enhanced and diminished the agricultural potential of the land. Growing populations and more intensive land us, both for agriculture and livestock, have led to changes in the structure of vegetation, hydrology, and land quality. Over the millennia, political and economic interventions, warfare and incursions by nomadic herding tribes all impacted sustainability of agriculture and the ability of the land to supports its populations. In much of the region today, agricultural land use is not sustainable given existing technology and national priorities. The Near Eastern case is instructive because of the quality of information, the length of the record, and the pace of modern change.
منابع مشابه
Variation and covariation in segregating wheat populations grown under rainfed and irrigated conditions in semi-arid region of the middle east
متن کامل
Fodder Trees and Shrubs in Arid and Semi-arid Livestock Production Systems
Arid and semi-arid lands constitute a large proportion of available agricultural and rangeland in the world. These lands are characterised by low and unreliable rainfall, low land productivity, and low socioeconomic status of the inhabitants. Livestock plays a very significant role in their economies. Leguminous trees and shrubs, which dominate the natural rangelands, are often higher in crude ...
متن کاملPastoralism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Know its Advantages, Understand its Challenges, Act for its Sustainability
On the global scale, extensive pastoral production accounts for 10% of total meat production (or a billion head of camels, cattle and small animals on all continents)1 and supports some 200 million pastoral households. Yet, despite the considerable benefits conferred by pastoral production systems, they are often denigrated as being archaic. [R1] On the African continent, despite these subjecti...
متن کاملThe effects of exclosure on plants in the semi-arid rangeland of North Khorasan province, Iran
Abstract Over the last fifty years, most of the semi-arid rangeland in Iran has been converted to cropland without an equivalent reduction in grazing animals. This shift has led to heavy grazing pressure on rangeland vegetation. The present study has been conducted in Sisab Research Station in the North Khorasan Province to evaluate effects of long-term grazing exclosures on biodiversity of ra...
متن کاملDesert kites and prehistoric periods in Iranian plateau
The known area of distribution of kites is very large, from Arabia and the Near East, to Armenia in the Caucasus and the Aralo-Caspian region, namely south-western Kazakhstan and western Uzbekistan (e.g. Barge et al. 2013).although still there is not any official report about its existence in Iranian plateau but regards to the vast distribution of desert kites from Egypt in west to Kazakhstan i...
متن کامل